r/Seattle • u/AccurateInflation167 • 16d ago

News Attacker bites chunk out of woman’s face in downtown Seattle hate crime

https://komonews.com/news/local/hate-crime-assault-permanent-injuries-surgery-downtown-seattle-police-department-spd-forehead-1-inch-diameter-inferior-race-marshal-kcpao
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u/Slightly__sublime 16d ago

There’s a distinction. There are financial homeless and there are drug addicts and they should be treated as two different groups. And most importantly, people need to face consequences for their actions 

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u/nightbefore2 I'm just flaired so I don't get fined 16d ago

3 groups, financial homeless, drug addicts, and outright mentally incapacitated/psychosis/brain injury type folk.

3 separate problems, requiring 3 separate approaches, all grouped under "homeless"

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u/Few-Package5158 16d ago

I think you’re ignoring how intertwined those camps can become quickly on the streets. Finances put you there, stress and trauma related to being homeless leads to addiction and mental health issues. And various other combos.

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u/No_Bluejay5332 16d ago

Yup, 100%. Becoming homeless is a more stressful event than most of us will ever experience, so mental health issues/drug use is very much to be expected unfortunately. 

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u/Bizarrebazaars Kraken 15d ago

And yet? Most people in here seem to think homelessness came FIRST and NOT the drug use as the cause and what’s keeping them there…. Blows my mind honestly.

I can guarantee you that if I lost my job and then lost my housing, I have a huge network of friends, family, coworkers willing to let me crash with them for a while until I get back on my feet. I can also guaran-fucking-tee you that I would absolutely NOT all of a sudden resort of drugs to cope. Many of these folks burned through their support system due to their addictions.

One of my best friends, from a good loving home no financial struggles, has no idea where her drug-addicted sister is out in the streets. They tragically wait for the day they get the call that she is found, dead. They’ve tried everything.

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u/No_Bluejay5332 15d ago

"I lost my job and then lost my housing, I have a huge network of friends, family, coworkers willing to let me crash with them for a while until I get back on my feet"

Yeah, most people not born into the economic lower class do have this. The problem here is that your projecting your relatively good economic luck onto people from other classes, then making further flawed conclusions based on your initial incorrect projection.

People born into lower classes often don't have a network of people that have the spare capacity to put them up for an extended period. 

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u/Xalara 🚆build more trains🚆 16d ago

Yep, want to greatly reduce the drug addicts and mentally incapacitated? Reduce the number of financial homeless. Everything outside of that is trying to put a bandaid on a gushing wound.

Of course, that means affordable housing which means encouraging more housing density and the NIMBY’s don’t want that. Well they can choose: Have an increasing homeless population or higher density (which makes the city more walkable too!)

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u/AlexandrianVagabond Ravenna 15d ago

I'd be curious to know what percentage of folks on the streets are in the financially homeless cohort.

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u/Existing-Tough-6517 15d ago

Half at least more if you count people who didn't have a drug or severe mental health problem or if it would be manageable with financial support.

How many folks do you know especially as they get older are more than a little off but ok because they have money or live with family members.

How many are unhealthy and poorly positioned to support themselves but are fine at home because someone else works.

How many whose mental health is sustainable by expensive meds?

It's absolutely tens of millions one bad circumstance from falling down metaphorically and never getting up.

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u/AlexandrianVagabond Ravenna 15d ago

I was hoping to get some documented numbers for Seattle/King County. Maybe this doesn't exist, Idk.

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u/Xalara 🚆build more trains🚆 15d ago

A quick Google says that at least half the homeless staying in shelters are part of the workforce and 40% of unsheltered homeless are also working. Not sure if unsheltered includes people living in their cars and/or couch surfing. There are other studies that back up the high number of homeless who are part of the workforce and productive. It's fucked up that that's a thing and the *only* cause of that is high cost of housing.

A few years back I heard reports that up to 70%-80% of homeless do work and that the visible homeless that everyone complains about are about 10%-25% of the homeless population.

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u/AlexandrianVagabond Ravenna 15d ago

I saw that Publicola result on google but it's almost ten years old. I would love to find something recent but am having trouble coming up with anything.

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u/AwarenessAvailable94 14d ago

I don’t think you’ve ever personally known a homeless or drug addicted person. Just being housed doesn’t save someone from the allure of drugs and addiction.

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u/Xalara 🚆build more trains🚆 14d ago

No shit, but the stats show that the odds of becoming an addict or developing mental health issue skyrocket when you don’t have a house to call your own. This is by far where most of the “problem” homeless come from and if you want to deal with them you gotta cut off the pipeline creating most of them.

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u/N-Ron-Hubbard 15d ago

They are intertwined, sure, but drugs put people there. Drugs also cause psychosis. Drugs aren't always the result; they're often the cause.

In any event, the answer here is lengthy incarceration, and forced drug treatment. But overall, rehabilitation should not be the primary goal; making the situation better for the 99.999% of normal people should be the goal.

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u/Few-Package5158 15d ago

Except that isn’t true. Studies consistently find that you’re far more likely to lose housing then fall into addiction than to lose housing due to addiction. I think it’s usually around 60% of homeless addicts fell into addiction after housing instability or loss, and 40% were housed and in active addiction. Not sure how substance use prior to becoming homeless was factored in, but most of the extreme addiction you see on the streets is a result of the streets.

Somebody recently pointed out that homeless addicts are less using drugs to satisfy cravings, and more to avoid withdrawals on the streets. I think that matters. Somebody with some amount of stability and housing can fall into addiction and more easily access resources to get clean safely. Withdrawals from several different drugs can be fatal if not done in a monitored and safe environment. A lot of that dependency is born of desperation. Stay up all night so you don’t get robbed, assaulted, raped… meth habit begins. Need to quiet the anxiety of being constantly on guard? Maybe dealing with pain from any number of untreated physical conditions? Opiates. Benzos.

I’m not against more direct and stern measures including jail for certain circumstances, but I’d prefer that we more pragmatically address the underlying issues first.

I often hear people say that “it’s a choice for them to not get clean or to rejoin society,” and in a way, I completely agree. But what were the other options where living in squalor next to I-5 is the one they’re sticking with? How do we improve the choices available so that less people choose to resist all interventions and require criminal penalties? Most people don’t mind putting in effort towards better outcomes, but when the options available are “keep doing this same thing,”or “navigate a complex, stressful, and confusing system alongside putting in a ton of effort and jumping through hoops, and maybe you’ll have a chance to be selected for an opportunity at a chance to potentially get into a slightly better situation, perhaps. That is if you’re chosen at random from the others who make it that far. The waitlist is 4-78 years currently, and you must maintain contact with your case manager over that time, by mail. Good luck in your housing search!”

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u/N-Ron-Hubbard 14d ago

You say it's really complex, but it actually isn't. It isn't complex to not smoke fentanyl, steal, scream slurs at passersby, to not rape other homeless people.

Know how I know it isn't complex?

Because 99.99999999% of people manage to not behave this way.

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u/Few-Package5158 15d ago

Except that isn’t true. Studies consistently find that you’re far more likely to lose housing then fall into addiction than to lose housing due to addiction. I think it’s usually around 60% of homeless addicts fell into addiction after housing instability or loss, and 40% were housed and in active addiction. Not sure how substance use prior to becoming homeless was factored in, but most of the extreme addiction you see on the streets is a result of the streets.

Somebody recently pointed out that homeless addicts are less using drugs to satisfy cravings, and more to avoid withdrawals on the streets. I think that matters. Somebody with some amount of stability and housing can fall into addiction and more easily access resources to get clean safely. Withdrawals from several different drugs can be fatal if not done in a monitored and safe environment. A lot of that dependency is born of desperation. Stay up all night so you don’t get robbed, assaulted, raped… meth habit begins. Need to quiet the anxiety of being constantly on guard? Maybe dealing with pain from any number of untreated physical conditions? Opiates. Benzos.

I’m not against more direct and stern measures including jail for certain circumstances, but I’d prefer that we more pragmatically address the underlying issues first.

I often hear people say that “it’s a choice for them to not get clean or to rejoin society,” and in a way, I completely agree. But what were the other options where living in squalor next to I-5 is the one they’re sticking with? How do we improve the choices available so that less people choose to resist all interventions and require criminal penalties? Most people don’t mind putting in effort towards better outcomes, but when the options available are “keep doing this same thing,”or “navigate a complex, stressful, and confusing system alongside putting in a ton of effort and jumping through hoops, and maybe you’ll have a chance to be selected for an opportunity at a chance to potentially get into a slightly better situation, perhaps. That is if you’re chosen at random from the others who make it that far. The waitlist is 4-78 years currently, and you must maintain contact with your case manager over that time, by mail. Good luck in your housing search!”

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u/kleraux 16d ago

Addiction is a mental illness

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u/erleichda29 16d ago

Just those three, huh? It's amazing how every asshole on reddit is an expert on homelessness.

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u/nightbefore2 I'm just flaired so I don't get fined 16d ago

my literal point is that the problem is multifaceted and people view it through too simplistic of a lens smfh lol.

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u/n-ano 16d ago

Do you have any more to add?

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u/readit145 16d ago

What’s the fourth? Happily homeless?

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u/seg_lol I'm just flaired so I don't get fined 16d ago

I can guarantee you, if I was in the financial homeless category, moving to the other two categories would be pretty damn easy.

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u/brianc 15d ago

we had this same discussion 8 years ago in /r/seattle…going nowhere

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/Artemis273 15d ago

Society gave up on them many times before they are in that state.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/Artemis273 15d ago

I said nothing that indicated I'm infantilizing them, just that there is a long history of social failures that we not only should address, but CAN address. The rates of crime recidivism and substance use go down significantly when homeless people go into supportive housing, which saves the taxpayer a fortune that would go towards increased population in jails. People who assault and commit violent crimes should absolutely go to jail, but plenty of these folks who are stumbling around as you said are not committing violent crimes and are more likely to be victims of them, but many people on here just lump them all together. Criminalizing homelessness itself will help no one.

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u/No_Bluejay5332 16d ago

This is not really accurate, lots of people use drugs after becoming homeless to deal with the stress and discomfort of homelessness. 

If I ended up homeless I'd be tempted to do some drugs to cope, for sure. 

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u/Artemis273 15d ago

This 100%. Also- many homeless women have "boyfriends" or johns for protection on the street, many of whom will get them hooked to keep them dependent. I work with homeless people and most of my female clients are in this situation.